Monday

Jun 27, 2011 at 12:01 AMJun 27, 2011 at 11:11 AM

For about five years now, I've struggled in vain to unravel the mystery behind why my second-grader likes the random, totally disconnected assortment of songs he does. (I have also struggled to understand why he doesn't like milk in his cereal and how the sentence "JUST GO GET DRESSED" can be so difficult to follow.)

For about five years now, I've struggled in vain to unravel the mystery behind why my second-grader likes the random, totally disconnected assortment of songs he does. (I have also struggled to understand why he doesn't like milk in his cereal and how the sentence "JUST GO GET DRESSED" can be so difficult to follow.)

In our early years, my Kid Playlist consisted of age-appropriate-enough fare — Bob Marley, Springsteen's Seeger Sessions record and pleasing old-timey stuff like "Beans and Cornbread" — music suited mostly to circumnavigating the southeastern United States in preposterous and doomed attempts to get him to engage in one of these "naps" I kept hearing other parents rave about ("Wait, these weird leaking marshmallowpuffs SLEEP?" my wife and I would think, in rare moments of lucidity buried deep within monthslong clouds of Folgers-powered hallucinations, "In the DAYTIME?")

These days, though it's getting easier: Now I can tell if he's going to like a song using this scientific criteria: Is it by the Dropkick Murphys?

The Dropkick Murphys, for the benefit of any non-music-nerd readers (Hi, Mom! He's fine, please stop worrying), are a Boston-based Irish-punk band who look like they make records in the rare moments when they're not smashing Sam Adams bottles over the heads of bespectacled stick-figures like yours truly and shouting unprintable things at Jeter (pauses to cross two things off of my Obvious Boston References list … aaaaaand … there). Singer Ken Casey has a voice that sounds like it's being dragged in circles around a gravel driveway. "This band makes me want to run fast," my son says. I'm listening to them now in the coffee shop, and it's taking a considerable amount of discipline to not smash my laptop on the ground and pick a fight with one of my neighbors, which is good, as most of them are really pretty old, and also this is my wife's computer.

But it's not just the Loud; the Murphys mix these things with old sounds, ancient Irish sounds, melodies that sound like they're made of rock (my son has also expressed interest in the Pogues, probably for similar reasons, although that led to a long discussion about the importance of quality dental care). I saw them at Bonnaroo last year at 4:45 p.m. in a breezeless tent; between the thousands in the crowd, the construction-site pound of the music and the fact that it was hot enough to cook a respectable flank steak in there, it is a wonder any of them survived, especially the guy whose bagpipes spontaneously burst into flame.

Anyway, my son is now — and I hate to make grand proclamations — probably the biggest Dropkick Murphys fan in the whole second grade, with the possible exception of that quiet kid James Bulger II (too soon?). One of my son's most favoritest Dropkick Murphys songs is called "Take 'Em Down," an lively, Celtic-flavored and 100 percent aggro-lefty pro-union track with a delightfully catchy chorus that insists, "We gotta take the bastards down," before downgrading for a moment to merely "smash them to the ground," and then, to bring it all home, one more long drawn-out "Take … the … bastards … down!" This last part he's has been known to punctuate with a fist-pump in the backseat. Which he may or may not have learned from, um, a parent. One of them. I'm not here to name names — something I learned from James Bulger II.

The problem is this: It's a REALLY FUN SONG. It's loud and frenetic and sounds like what happens when a bunch of good-hearted beerpeople with shared histories and ambitions find themselves in the preposterously awesome position of getting to make records for money. As for the language, it's not something we say around the house a lot, but at some point, I'm pretty sure he'll either 1. Eat in a school cafeteria or 2. See a movie.

My son's second favorite is called "Sunday Hardcore Matinee," which is about going to punk shows, and the therapeutic liveliness and sense of unity contained therein. In my brain, which we can all agree is striving for justifications at this point, he is only hearing that second part, the one where the takeaway message is about community, shared energy and picking up your friends (or enemies) when they fall or are accidentally pushed down maliciously. His third-favorite is "Peg O' My Heart," which features Bruce Springsteen, but he's starting to resist that one given how little his dad shuts up about his own Springsteen thing.

Anyway, as a fan of music, the Dropkick Murphys and telling people that my son likes cool bands as though it sneakily validates my own continued legitimacy as an aging breeder ("Look at my little accessory! HE LIKES THE AVETT BROTHERS, WHICH MEANS I AM NOT OLD!") , it's occurred to me over the years that there's really no quantifiable thread in what he likes, or what I do, or what you do, although, as with anyone, somewhere in there, somewhere in that playlist, lay little hidden secrets and underground clues to what his furiously mobile brain is doing, and what it'll be doing five or 10 or 50 years from now. It might possibly even explain the milk thing.

Jeff Vrabel cannot hear "Three Little Birds" without getting seriously wistful for those failed-nap drives. He can be reached at http://jeffvrabel.com and/or followed at http://twitter.com/jeffvrabel.

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